Are you lazy in your thinking?

It sounds like a basic concept of success.
It’s pretty simple. In fact it’s so simple you could flippantly read it and go, “Yep, I know that.”

The truth for me, is that for 20 years I did exactly that to many of the valuable concepts I came across…
“Yep, I know that.”

I didn’t realise it at the time,
but I was being lazy in my thinking.

I read personal development and business books voraciously, but, and here’s the important bit, I didn’t think about any of it, for long enough to feel into what I was reading. That’s why I plateaued well before I reached my potential.

I now know this happened because I intellectually banked the information I was reading.
“Yep, seen that.”, “I know that”, “I’ve done that.”, “Ohhh, I should do that!”

I was logically categorising the information, but I wasn’t thinking deeply and widely about what I was reading, and I certainly wasn’t checking how I really felt about it.

Consequently, when I tried to implement the wisdom I’d read, I realised it didn’t feel true and solid to me, and therefore, the new ideas I thought I understood failed to support me when I needed them the most.

Of course I blamed the ideas for not being solid, and then went on looking for better ideas! But in hindsight it usually wasn’t the ideas … it was my thinking around them that wasn’t solid enough.

I was lazy in my thinking.

I now understand that a single statement about success that has been thought through deeply, so deeply that I actually feel deeply connected to it, will be able to assist me far more than one hundred ideas that ‘I know’ to be important. And, in order for that to be the case, I need to be willing to do the internal thinking work… yes, work.

It really is a case of great success requires great work or, to put it another way, solid internal principles of success require solid internal work.